March 09, 2014

Cape Girardeau County Lincoln Day Speech

I am honored to speak to you tonight. Uncharacteristically, I'll try not to be long-winded in deference to the sheer volume of speeches you'll have to endure.

First, let me say that I love God. I love the United States of America. I love you fellow patriots, and I love this great city, and the surrounding area, which is the best place in the world to live and raise a family.

We are so blessed; blessed to live here, to enjoy freedom to express ourselves, to worship who and how we please, and to conduct our lives the way we believe they should be conducted. Even under the disastrous Obama administration, we are still freer and more prosperous than most people who have ever inhabited the earth. But all this is in jeopardy. I know you sense it. Almost everyone I talk to in this community and elsewhere realizes the seriousness of the threats we are facing that imperil our liberties, our prosperity, our financial security, and most importantly our children and grandchildren's future.

Trust me when I tell you I am not indulging myself in hyperbole to get a rise out of a presumably friendly audience. I am not being hysterical. I am not being extreme, or radical. But most of all, I'm not being pessimistic.

There is a world of difference between recognizing and calling attention to our very grave problems on the one hand, and believing they will finish us, on the other. I believe we will beat back these threats against America, but we will NOT do so by ignoring them or downplaying their severity. Only if we recognize our problems, appreciate their magnitude, and resolve to address them aggressively and fiercely, will we be able to preserve America's greatness.

Despite what some may assume from my writings and my passion for politics, I am not about partisanship for the sake of it. I belong to the Republican Party because it has been the best vehicle of those available for advancing ideas that I believe in, though at times it has also been very disappointing in that respect.

Unlike so many Democrats, we do not believe in our party, right or wrong. We don't believe in our party, at all costs. We believe in America and its founding principles, which are embodied in political conservatism. To the extent that the Republican Party deviates from political conservatism, we are disappointed and oppose it, because to deviate from conservatism is to deviate from the ideas that have made America unique and the envy of the world.

I could pass a polygraph test when I tell you that if a Republican president were operating as lawlessly, as recklessly, as brazenly, as narcissistically, and as disrespectful of the United States Constitution as President Obama has and is, I would favor throwing him out on his ear -- for this isn't about party. This is about the United States of America; it's about the State of Missouri; the County and City of Cape Girardeau and all other states and communities in this country. And it's about us -- the people.

But, regrettably, the Democratic Party has either sold its soul for the sake of maintaining raw political power, or it is so irretrievably invested in extreme leftist policies that it won't withdraw support for this menace of a destructive president nor lift a finger of opposition to his ghastly agenda.

The Democrats are in lockstep with this president, who is literally destroying this country in the process of actualizing his promise to fundamentally transform it. They are either in concert with him, applauding him every step of the way, or they are so blindly partisan that they can't even recognize the abject failure of his policies.

We can no longer honestly say that the two major political parties share the same goals for this country but just prefer different policies to achieve them. I'm sorry if it makes some people uncomfortable that I am making these statements, but, on balance, I can't defer to those sensitivities at the expense of telling you the truth.

Part of the reason we are still saddled with this nightmare in the executive branch is that too few good people have been willing to acknowledge, much less express just how noxious his policies are for this Republic. If our side didn't make a practice of downplaying Obama's nefariousness, if the consummate gentleman Mitt Romney hadn't backed off on Benghazi when he had his flagrantly dishonest opponent on the ropes in the presidential debate; if certain so-called rightwing commentators hadn't routinely pulled their punches for fear of either incurring the disapproval of beltway elitists or of being tarred as racists, if certain party regulars hadn't demonized the Tea Party -- the very lifeblood of the conservative movement -- then maybe we wouldn't be suffering through Act 2 in the worst real-life play that has ever unfolded in the history of that "white house" on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I've repeatedly pondered whether I'm too strident in expressing my concern over the current state of affairs, but I always end up concluding that I have a duty to keep speaking out. Some say we should take this in stride, but I think this approach can be more problematic than mine. We cannot minimize what's going on here, or we minimize our future. We'll have to just deal with the blowback and continue to do our part in trying to protect this nation, along with and following the example of my unfairly maligned brother, Rush Limbaugh, who I am most proud to call my brother, and who is fighting every day to save America. Let them call him divisive and extreme. Let them call us divisive and extreme. Let them call the Tea Party divisive and extreme. For if divisive and extreme means that we refuse to abandon the fight for this country lest it divide us from those hell-bent on destroying it, then let us proudly plead guilty.

Democrats aren't sitting around shooting themselves with friendly fire. They aren't accusing each other of extremism, divisiveness, and stridency, even though their leftist radicals have become the mainstream of their party, and even though their president has governed and campaigned stridently and divisively.

No, we no longer share a vision with the Democratic Party, which is led by the most virulent anti-Americanism we've ever witnessed in the Oval Office. Whether Dinesh D'Souza was correct in his theory as to WHY Obama doesn't like America, the fact is he has an obvious grudge against this nation as it was founded and as it flourished prior to his taking office -- otherwise he wouldn't have promised to fundamentally change it. Period.

Obama sees our founding steeped in racism, economic injustice, power imbalances and free market principles for which he has unmistakable contempt, though he fervently denies it. His vision is to radically change America, and his vision has become the Democratic Party's vision, because they have fully embraced it and supported him each and every step of the way.

What is that vision? It is a utopian hallucination featuring an equality of economic outcomes rather than maximizing economic opportunity; of expanding the power of the federal government over ever-greater areas of our lives; of using the government not to ensure equal justice and impartial treatment under the law, but as a weapon to force payback on those they believe to have oppressed others in our past; of downsizing our military; of selectively diminishing the religious liberties and freedom of expression of those who don't agree with their worldview, and of continuing to misappropriate the incomes and private property of some people for the benefit of others, who they are encouraging NOT TO BE productive members of society and TO BE dependent on the government as they fan the flames of envy and covetousness. In so doing, they show contempt for the 10th Commandment, to the detriment of our social fabric. Their vision looks nothing like the America we love or that the founders instituted.

It is also a vision, folks, that is utterly unsustainable. There used to be time when socialist-oriented statists could continue to burden the free market and our political liberties with their incremental encroachments, but we are reaching the tipping point beyond which this near-miraculous engine of freedom we call the United States will not be able to support its own dead weight. This is tragic but wholly avoidable, if we join together to act.

We have a $17T debt and $100T of unfunded liabilities and a president who, along with his party, outright refuses to address them. Unless we restructure our entitlements we will -- not might -- go bankrupt. Unless we unshackle our businesses and individuals from his oppressive regulatory, taxing, and spending policies, and his premeditated expansion of the welfare state, we will remain quagmired in HIS -- not George W. Bush's -- perpetually sluggish economy, and the worst labor participation rate in our history. Unless we restore economic growth we will not be able to fund the military we desperately need in this age of terrorist threats, on top of potential threats from Russia and China. And unless we repeal Obamacare we will ensure the disintegration of the best health care system in the history of the world and the further erosion of our liberties.

But Obama and his party are obstructing our pathway to remedy all these problems. They are wedded to the pernicious myth that the only way to grow the economy is through harebrained Keynesian stimulus schemes -- stealing money from the private sector and forcing its wasteful expenditure in the manner liberal bureaucrats direct, rather than through the wisdom of the invisible hand of the market. And they are addicted to the partisan political benefits they derive from their overt war on the work ethic and from demonizing achievers and those daring to earn their own way in this climate of government-encouraged sloth. They are determined to destroy our conventional energy resources -- coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear -- and the industries producing them, in favor of phony, failed, unpromising, inefficient, and colossally wasteful green energy ideas grounded in the infernal fable of global warming, which they have now conveniently -- and shamelessly -- morphed into "climate change." You could almost believe that these leftwing cultists were sincere about the necessity of bankrupting ourselves to save the planet if you didn't understand that if we were to implement every draconian measure mandated by the Kyoto treaty it wouldn't reduce the mean global temperature beyond a meaningless fraction of a degree in a hundred years. It's a transparent excuse to expand government, just like Obamacare, which was sold on the lie that it would increase access and choice and decrease costs, but is doing precisely the opposite, as we knew it would. But they're not abandoning that either -- because, just as with global warming, it's not about what they say it's about. It's about restructuring America in their warped image. After five plus years of this avoidable train-wreck of an agenda, coupled with every other time they've tried such insanity in our history, how could they not know it cannot work? Yet they will not abandon these schemes, and so as long as they're in power we will see more of the same, which is why we must thoroughly defeat them.

But what about us? What do we believe in? Do we still believe in America and its founding principles? Do we still believe in the constitutionally prescribed limitations on government -- our separation of powers, our federalist scheme of dividing powers between the state and federal governments, and our Bill of Rights, all designed to maximize individual liberties, which has the happy consequence of also maximizing prosperity? Or are we afraid of our shadow, fatalistically resigned to diluting our platform and doing whatever we think we have to do to win over so-called moderates and independents. Have we chosen to become Democrat lite -- demonstrating our differences from Democrats with pale pastels rather than bold colors?

Do we still believe in American exceptionalism, in liberty, in equality of opportunity, in the rule of law, and in the Constitution, which was designed to safeguard all these things?

I am betting that we do. I am betting that despite your fear and horror about what's going on in this country, that along with me, you will refuse to pronounce America, as we have known her, dead. I know you wouldn't be here tonight if you were ready to throw in the towel, if you were ready to abandon your children's future to a liberal establishment that has infiltrated every aspect of our culture, our educational institutions and our government.

We must stand together to prevent them from completing their transformation of America into something my parents wouldn't recognize. We will stand with the rest of the patriots in this still great and always resilient nation and fight until we have no more breath remaining in us to take back this country -- not for ourselves, as if it is some kind of partisan power trip -- but for America and Americans.

Despite what Obama endlessly says and his partisan parrots dutifully repeat, we DO have wonderful ideas -- timeless ideas that involve unleashing the private sector and free market forces to restore ourselves as the most industrious and productive people on the planet. We have specific, workable plans to reform health care, to restructure entitlements, to reinstitute responsible spending on constitutionally prescribed government services, to roll back the regulatory state, to quit using the tax code to punish producers and the successful, who happen to create jobs. We have tried and tested programs to wean people off of government dependency and free them from the prison of inferior public schools in the inner cities. We have concrete proposals to unburden our energy industry and to refurbish our military commensurate with our national commitment to continue as the strongest, most benevolent world power in history. And we must be emboldened to stand up for life and for traditional values that God ordained as necessary for the organization of a civil society.

Sure, we can compromise with Democrats when we have no other choice, but we must be mindful that our history of compromise with Democrats has often been to allow them to demagogue and bully us into getting most of what they want, with the result that we continue our slow, steady march -- now rapidly accelerated sprint -- to a socialist state.

Above all, we must stop being ashamed of what we claim to believe in and start preaching it and teaching it unapologetically. We know our ideas work and have always worked, so why would we ever want to emulate Democrats?

In the meantime, we must no longer ignore the institutionalized slander from the left that depicts us, simply by virtue of our conservatism or "Republicanism," as being uncompassionate, racist, and sexist. We are the ones who are compassionate. We don't just TALK compassion; our policies produce results. They produce the most prosperity for the most people and despite what Democrats say, we are not opposed to a reasonable safety net for those who slip through the cracks. Democrats no longer get a pass in calling themselves compassionate when their policies destroy, impoverish and enslave the very people they claim to care most about. Obama lectures us on income inequality while his policies have grossly exacerbated that condition -- as if he's an innocent bystander. We can no longer sit by while Democrats smear us as racists when we demand voter ID to ensure the integrity of elections, and policies to protect our borders from illegal immigrant encroachment.

We aspire to a colorblind and gender-blind society, which treats all people equally under the law. We do not believe in using the law to uneven the odds. We believe in promoting equal opportunity and maximizing liberty for all.

So let's start proudly advocating what we stand for -- a recapturing of the American dream. And let's quit shooting ourselves over disagreements within the party. Establishment oriented Republicans are delusional if they think they can purge the party of its conservative base and survive. We Tea Partiers are short-sighted if we think we can build a coalition without working with the party. We Republicans must all unite to defeat the common opponent, the opponent who is well underway to reestablishing this nation into something foreign to us and everything we believe in.

Let's join hands; let's crouch in the same foxholes to take America back, and to work toward our common goal of restoring it as the glorious land of liberty our ancestors established and spilled blood to protect, and as the shining city on a Hill that remains the envy of the rest of the globe. With our undying dedication, steadfast prayers, and God's blessings, we can do this. So let's do it.